The present invention is concerned with a method for combining individual transport on roads with rail-bound transport by train, with rapid changeover from one transport mode to the other.
West German published patent application 34 25 698, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses apparatus having an undercarriage for cross-rolling a road vehicle.
The advantage of road traffic is that of individually transporting persons or goods at any time at any location to any other site located on a road. However, the drawback is that at least one driver is required for every vehicle, and this driver is stressed, especially on long itineraries, on account of constantly changing traffic conditions. Rail traffic, on the other hand, is a rigid system which however offers significant advantages for long hauls. The rails precisely prescribe the travel track, the locks releasing the tracks for traffic extensively avert impacts and other accidents even in poor visibility, and the probability of accidents is reduced by additional technical improvements and redundancy.
Accident statistics unequivocally are in favor of rail traffic. Developments to relieve truck drivers are still embryonic and one may firmly conclude from thorough consideration of the traffic matter that transient intervention to assist a vehicle-driver blackout is indeed conceivable. Also further relief for his attention is possible, but fully automatic control of all the moving vehicles in the individual traffic mode would be so costly and yet so unreliable that rail traffic would have to be invented if it were not already on the scene. Other important advantages of rail traffic are the four-fold improved energy efficiency, also the cleanest ecological power plant where an electric locomotive is used, and only one pair of conductors is needed for a long freight train.
The traditional system of freight shipping, still in use, employing freight cars, suffers from switching, entailing layover times using up a multiple of the travel time. An improvement is container traffic. Containers lack their own means of motion and require cranes, various handling equipment and associated operators, which are available in rationalized manner only at large reshipment centers. Stopovers cannot load on unload several or all cars in a few minutes and then let the roads and loading facilities be open again to the next traffic.
It has already been suggested to equip trucks with a sort of crane allowing containers to be raised by the driver himself from the truck onto a railway car, and vice-versa. However this requires a support system for the truck in addition to the apparatus to carry out this transfer, where this support system must always be carried along even when the truck is empty besides the loading frame.
Moreover, this support system is restrictive because the most common containers suited for this purpose are 20 feet long and amount to a rudimentary box restricted in length and inadequate for special shipments such as for refrigerated foodstuffs or for instance for liquids. There are many objects requiring greater lengths of containers, and such objects will be found in the 40-foot containers.
In the event of 40-foot containers, they are no longer suitable for the suggested rail-reloading equipment to be carried along on a truck for reasons of size and weight.
As regards larger containers, and special containers such as refrigeration containers for Argentinian meat, large ports have loading plants, cranes and so-called handling equipment with personnel.
However, this is not the case for smaller railroad stations which are connected to large European or national roads and may service long-distance hauls for originating traffic or may feed them to distribution.